Children in peril: The shocking reality of children and drugs in Britain today

Kids can now get hold of skunk cannabis more easily than they can buy alcohol

DANIEL was in a morning maths lesson when his drooping head finally struck the desk.

As his teacher shook him from his stupor, the 12-year-old’s glazed eyes and vacant look gave the game away – he was stoned.

This shocking scenario is repeated at schools across Britain as pupils can now get hold of super-strength skunk cannabis more easily than they can buy alcohol.

Latest Department of Health figures show 58% of children who seek specialist treatment do so as a result of cannabis use.

But those statistics are based on voluntary surveys – and thousands more young cannabis users go undetected.

For Daniel the first cannabis spliff of the day was always on the school field before registration or during morning break – and it left him in no state for learning.

“I was smoking cannabis every day – before school, during school and after school,” he says. “It would be four or five joints a day. I was smoking at home so I wouldn’t even do my homework.

“Friends were getting it for me, some even younger than me. I would go up to the school field and roll a spliff. I had my gear in my pocket most of the time. The teachers had no idea what we were up to.

“I was feeling constantly tired and couldn’t be bothered to do anything. I was sleeping a lot more than I should have been. I found it hard to get up in the morning and to sit through a whole lesson felt impossible.

“A few times I walked into school and my eyes were red and glaring. I felt OK, I never thought it was a problem. But it was.”

Last year Daniel was excluded from his state secondary in south London because of his drug use and poor attendance.

Now, aged only 14, he has been given a final chance to get an education.

It’s not something you expect to hear from a boy with a Ben 10 pencil case.

Of the 7,000 pupils who took part in the latest nationwide drug-use survey, only 18% admitted taking drugs.

But users seem to be getting younger. Last year two eight-year-olds were caught showing bags of cannabis to their pals at a school in Blackpool.

Four nine-year-olds were suspended from a school in Burnley, Lancs, for possessing the same drug the year before.

A school in Cumbria recently excluded 17 pupils following an investigation into the sale on its premises of anti-depressants containing diazepam.

Sara, from Chelmsford, Essex, was thrown out of her family home when her boozing spiralled into a daily cocktail of hard drugs. Egged on by a friend, she smuggled alcohol into school by pouring spirits into soft drink bottles when she was just 13.

“I started doing cocaine and weed while I was still excessively drinking,” Sara recalls. “I’m talking six bottles of wine and vodka from when I got up until I passed out somewhere.

“It got to the point where I was being sick during lessons. I couldn’t stand up, I couldn’t see straight and I was slurring. I got kicked out of school because I used to turn up drunk and do coke before I went in.

“With one of my friends I was doing coke every day for four or five months. We would do a good few lines a day. I lost about six stone. I looked awful. I was arguing with my parents all the time. I was so nasty to my mum she nearly ended up in hospital.

“In the end they asked me to leave. ­Sometimes I would sleep rough on the streets.” Sara ended up in a homeless hostel where there was “always drugs around”.

“I was hanging out with people in their 40s,” she recalls. “These were alcoholics and drug addicts. That really hit me. There was this one alcoholic in my hostel who used to smoke heroin. He was 48. I would be constantly in his room.

“At my lowest point, I had a 16-hour blank when I went missing. I was so out of it I couldn’t even crawl.

“I was covered in blood, with bruises all over my body. All my clothes were ripped. All my hair was soaked in blood. I had strangle marks. I had no idea where my bag was. My jewellery had been taken off me – a necklace, rings and earrings.

“The only reason my friends found me was because I got run over.”

Kids can sometimes fall into drugs because of problems at home but Sara has no such excuses. She was cherished by both her parents but just couldn’t resist the temptations in front of her.

“I had everything handed to me on a plate,” she confesses. “I don’t know why I chose to go the way I did.”

Unlike Melanie, from Brent, north London, who drank alone in local pubs when she was only 12 to blot out memories of the domestic abuse she was suffering. Along with the booze, she was also taking drugs.

And, despite being obviously under age, Melanie never had a problem getting served.

“Drinking was the only thing that helped me get away from things,” she says. “I was drinking a lot of cider, wine and vodka. I was drinking in pubs. Usually I was on my own. All my money was going in the pub.

“I wish the landlord had got a hold of me and said, ‘Look, you’re under age, you shouldn’t be drinking’, but he never did.”

Roger Allen

Concern: Sonny and his mum Nadine

Asbo kid Sonny Grainger, 14, was handed the latest in a series of banning orders just before Christmas after pushing a smoke bomb into a shop on the ­Boothferry Estate in Hull. Sonny’s one-child crimewave first surfaced in the courts when he was 12 and he’s been excluded from SEVEN schools.

His mum Nadine West, 41, insists her struggle to control her son was made worse by access to cannabis and alcohol. She says: “I was ignorant about what Sonny was doing and, to be honest, I didn’t want to hear about it.

“But parents here are dealing drugs around their children. He tried cannabis when he was about 12. He was up all night playing computer games. I had to lock all my windows as he’d be sneaking out. I was constantly exhausted. He would be going out and I would have to find him. It was older boys who gave him the drugs.”

Today, the biggest fear of youth drug counsellors is that affected children such as Daniel, Sara, Melanie and Sonny will have nowhere to go as the Government squeezes local budgets.

Treatment services have closed in London while drug and alcohol education workers in Coventry, Swindon and Herts have lost their jobs. Meanwhile recent figures suggest alcohol abuse alone costs hospital A&E services £1billion a year. Simon Antrobus, chief executive of charity Addaction, says: “With young people’s ­services we’ve seen some local authorities impose disproportionate savings of up to 50%.

“This has meant a significant reduction in the support we can offer young people, many of whom rely on those services. Without timely intervention, severe drug and alcohol problems escalate.”

Mark Munday, head of Essex Young People’s Drug and Alcohol Service, helped rescue Sara but his work is being “badly hit”. Asked if children will soon be more at risk, he replies: “Yes. When young people turn to drugs it is often a way of coping when their life is hard. So if things are getting harder with the recession, that will increase our numbers, too.

“While the numbers are increasing, they are reducing our money. That is this Government’s way of trying to get more for less.

“Drugs are not just about the hoodies in the deprived areas – they often affect good kids caught up in an adult world. It could be your child.”